Are You Not Entertained?
Caleb Konley vs Shannon Moore, Talk Is Cheap (AML Wrestling)
Seven years ago this December I saw, at the tender age 58, my first live wrestling show. On that occasion I shyly chatted with wrestler Caleb Konley - a kayfabe Calvin Klein model who posed in his Calvins and played the role of male-model heel. We spoke quietly at the merch table, and as I recall I had little to say, being a total stranger to his world except through my imagination and TV.
I made up for some of my reticence back then on Saturday when I went solo (as I sometimes do) to a wrestling show at a nearby middle school gym. This time I bought a T-shirt and a signed 8x10 and reminisced with Caleb about popping my wrestling cherry in 2011. Given his hectic schedule, I was surprised he remembered the event, even recalling the name of the bar in Raleigh where the show was staged.
I briefly spoke with him again during the intermission, and then after the show a third time, congratulating him on a fantastic main-event match against Shannon Moore, replacing the previously announced contender for Konley's AML belt. My ingrained bashfulness kicked in again as I wanted to ask for another picture of him as he was right then, covered in sweat - he looked glorious - but I did not. Sigh.
The whole show was outstanding, and Konley vs Moore was its crowning piece - two North Carolinians with starkly different temperaments (or, rather, different gimmicks, since Shannon was, like Caleb, warm and courteous when I told him I'd seen him perform in Cocoa, Florida, in July, with my friend Pete). The Durham crowd loved both the champ and the challenger and cheered both men through a grueling street-fight match. (The idea of a crowd encouraging two men to destroy each other is simultaneously perverse and exhilarating. Perhaps that's why Caleb quoted a line from Gladiator after bashing in Shannon's forehead.)
Adding to the air of decadence, the Vegas-pink lighting makes flesh look raw and desirable. My legs were wide apart through most of the whole show. Caleb Konley has what I consider the perfect body for pro wrestling - stocky, sturdy, nimble, heavy enough to make the squared circle go boom, agile enough for the leaps and jujitsu lunges required of 21st-century wrestlers.
Even more impressive was Caleb and Shannon's keen sense of dramatic timing - beginning with what could pass as legit grappling, then stepping the action up to fancier choreographed moves that were both dancerly and brutal, and then blasting away at each other with tables, ladders, baking pans, and trash cans - all over the place, in the ring, in a speedily cleared section of the audience, and, more perilously, up on the gymnasium's bleachers.
I paid special attention to the pacing. The way something would be set up early on - a strategically positioned garbage can, for instance. Then there would be three or four expertly timed feints towards it before the climactic boom when butts hit aluminum. After the thrilling finisher, Konley, still the champ, still the gentleman, invited Moore to stand at his side to receive his share of the crowd's adoration.
Great show, great fun. I'd never seen an AML show before, but the Winston-Salem promotion is now on my radar.
Visit AML Wrestling here.
The whole show was outstanding, and Konley vs Moore was its crowning piece - two North Carolinians with starkly different temperaments (or, rather, different gimmicks, since Shannon was, like Caleb, warm and courteous when I told him I'd seen him perform in Cocoa, Florida, in July, with my friend Pete). The Durham crowd loved both the champ and the challenger and cheered both men through a grueling street-fight match. (The idea of a crowd encouraging two men to destroy each other is simultaneously perverse and exhilarating. Perhaps that's why Caleb quoted a line from Gladiator after bashing in Shannon's forehead.)
Adding to the air of decadence, the Vegas-pink lighting makes flesh look raw and desirable. My legs were wide apart through most of the whole show. Caleb Konley has what I consider the perfect body for pro wrestling - stocky, sturdy, nimble, heavy enough to make the squared circle go boom, agile enough for the leaps and jujitsu lunges required of 21st-century wrestlers.
Even more impressive was Caleb and Shannon's keen sense of dramatic timing - beginning with what could pass as legit grappling, then stepping the action up to fancier choreographed moves that were both dancerly and brutal, and then blasting away at each other with tables, ladders, baking pans, and trash cans - all over the place, in the ring, in a speedily cleared section of the audience, and, more perilously, up on the gymnasium's bleachers.
I paid special attention to the pacing. The way something would be set up early on - a strategically positioned garbage can, for instance. Then there would be three or four expertly timed feints towards it before the climactic boom when butts hit aluminum. After the thrilling finisher, Konley, still the champ, still the gentleman, invited Moore to stand at his side to receive his share of the crowd's adoration.
Great show, great fun. I'd never seen an AML show before, but the Winston-Salem promotion is now on my radar.
Visit AML Wrestling here.
I haven't seen Shannon Moore in a while. He and Konley (a long time turn on whose brief trunks I missed in this match) look great and the match is deliciously brutal. There is nothing like a hard fought vicious match in a small venue where the smell of sweat and the sound of pain are at an arm's length. These folks work their asses off for what I suspect is not a lot of pay. And yes, we are entertained. Like we are by nothing else.
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